


Regarding Dean

by NeoSoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anorexia, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bulimia, Dean Winchester Has an Eating Disorder, Eating Disorders, F/M, Headcanon, M/M, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, basically another exploration, in the closet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoSoul/pseuds/NeoSoul
Summary: Dean's had an eating disorder for years, basically plagued him from childhood.  From childhood food insecurity, to a coping mechanism that seemed to mold around him.But this thing is mean, and it seems to slowly manifest throughout the years - becoming another monster.





	Regarding Dean

**Author's Note:**

> we do it again - this time it's more exploration.  
idk - I like ED explorations of different characters.

It wasn’t Dad that brought Dean over the edge. It wasn’t losing Sam, the first time, nor was it Hell - a year later. It wasn’t the meeting of Castiel, nor was it Sam saying yes and then jumping into the pit.  
It wasn’t suburban life, as much as he wanted to blame the change, no it wasn’t that. It wasn’t the Leviathans either - who even created a complete threat to any and all food Dean would eat.  
No, it was his own stupid addiction. The way he basically starved himself as a kid - to take care of Sam, and when food was available, he’d end up just eating everything he could. It was just some stupid thing he did as a kid. He had gotten over it by the time he had gone to find Sam back at Stanford.  
He was fine, really.  
He wasn’t pushed over the edge for a while. It just came to haunt in many small ways. The way he’d sometimes eat a little too much at night, causing him to not eat the next day - but it seemed to only happen every once in a while, and it didn’t really scare him, frankly he found it calming. It helped him when things started to get bad.  
Dean hadn’t ever expected it to come back, as his life had seemed to be so stagnant. It was always the same, just different areas with different monsters.  
After Sam died, the first time; Dean found himself spiraling a bit more. Before the crossroads deal, he ended up eating far too much, and with it came some awful guilt he had never felt before. That night was the first time he ended up puking in one of the absolutely disgusting bathrooms in some dingy diner, before he basically sold his soul for his brother.  
During his “final year”, Dean found himself just not caring, literally at all. He just had to hide it, but he just couldn’t really take it seriously. Sometimes it was not eating that felt better, sometimes it was eating and puking while Sam was asleep. He was ok with binging in front of Sam, but the purging wasn’t anything he wanted Sam to find.  
It would break Sam even more than knowing that this was the last year. Dean promised to keep this from Sam, for the sake of sanity.  
The further the year went, the more Dean would do it, and it did hurt, yes. Once the time was up; Dean ended up with quite a bit of crap pain. A stabbing in his stomach, digestion issues, and his teeth were on their own way to destruction. Dean had destroyed himself before the Hellhounds could.  
When he awoke four months later, he noticed the way nothing hurt. He was hungry, thirsty, and completely confused, but everything he had destroyed, well it felt fine, in tact, actually.  
Even at the gas station, around a completely absurd amount of unguarded food, he didn’t feel the same urge. He remembered it, yes, but he didn’t feel the same around food - or the same impulses he used to have.  
Something had changed, until he ate.  
He was hungry, yes, and that was valid, as four months was quite a bit of time to be stuck underground.  
The food didn’t cause him to suddenly spiral. It just reminded him of why he would do it. It filled a hunger that seemed to never go away - it was just a hole really.  
Getting back to Bobby, and then Sam was awkward - really.  
It seemed that meeting Castiel brought him back to reality, but when he learned of Sam’s whole demon blood addiction, he found himself back with the awful guilt. The guilt that caused him to completely fall back into his old habits.  
It started with fasting and binging before he mustered the courage again, to binge and purge. This time it felt more addicting, somehow, except the fact that Castiel loved to show up either right before or after, trying to explain to Dean that it was dangerous.  
Dean just couldn’t care, not at all.  
He was never one to be crazy addicted to the whole thing. It sort of ran in the background of the oncoming Apocalypse.  
Even during the events of the alternate universe, Dean had the same stupid obsession with food, but he was just stuck in the limbo between disorders.  
He assumed he was just destined to have issues with food, and it’s either he eats too much or nothing at all and then consumes too much. He actually found himself filled with more hatred for the fact that he couldn’t just starve himself. Even for someone like himself, someone who didn’t really know all too much about eating issues - there was this hierarchy, and even with no competition; not eating was at the top, and binging was at the bottom.  
Dean loathed the feeling of food more and more, but he was just as addicted as he had been.  
It was Dean who felt guilty, after Sam released Lucifer from Hell; had he not been trapped by angels, could he have stopped Sam. It was his fault, and Sam seemed to blame himself, and not Dean.  
Castiel was still not a huge fan, at all, but he never tried to stop Dean. The one time he tried to, Dean ended up having a panic attack in the same bathroom, while Cas just watched, terrified. He learned that this was the way Dean coped, and he was helpless in helping him at this moment.  
His encounter with Famine just solidified the stupid reasons he did what he did, and it gave him much less of an incentive to stop. This had integrated itself into his personality, really, yet it was a hidden fact from everyone, as with all of his feelings, it got stuffed down - until one day, when it’d all just rip him from the inside out.  
When Sam had decided to say yes to Lucifer, Dean couldn’t do anything but eat - and puke- and eat again. He just went numb, and the moment he lost his brother - it just consumed him.  
Watching it, he couldn’t even think - he just couldn’t fathom existing at all.  
Cas was the one who pulled him up, after the aftermath. He couldn’t really breath, no, as Cas held a hand to his forehead. Their eyes met, and somehow he couldn’t face Cas. It just kept bringing him back to his brother, and every memory ran through his mind.  
Dean just shoved Cas aside, and drove for hours, first to see Bobby, then to just eat and puke until nothing else seemed to matter, and with his throat completely burnt out - he went to Lisa, broken, puke on his breath, and having nothing left.  
His life changed drastically, and with it, so did he.  
Adjusting didn’t take time, suspiciously, but he tried to even stop the strange food habits that he had - even the ones he had from childhood. Suddenly he was almost normal.  
Almost.  
It seemed almost too fast.  
Which was the almost.  
Some nights he’d still be up at 3 am, over a toilet, just trying to get whatever stupid thing he binged on. It wasn’t diner food, nor was it crappy gas station burritos, no this was actual food, and it never settled well with his digestive track, which never quite healed up.  
It never quite went away, and Lisa never quite knew what was up. Dean had gotten so good at hiding it with his brother, that it was almost too easy now.  
Sometimes he’d find himself in a state of reminiscing over a dark toilet bowl- remembering the old motel rooms, and the way Cas would just try to talk him out of it, every time he did it - but it never worked. Dean just liked the sentiment.  
It was painful.  
The small moments began to grow, and Dean found himself more in a state of how he used to be.  
He found himself less able to control it.  
So it was now just a month in, and he started to feel like he was going insane. The food was a way of control - broken control. He found it becoming a nightly thing - just something to do before he went to bed.  
Since it was no longer the same mounds of junk - Dean had started to lose weight.  
He wasn’t obsessed with the scale, no, but it was there, and it kept nagging him. Literally every house in suburbia had one, which Dean never quite understood.  
It got worse, as life grew more normal, Dean became more abnormal. He found himself just completely lost. He’d stare himself down in the mirror, before and after a shower. He never realized how much he seemed to hate himself. The burdens of his past lay on his now slightly bonier shoulders. He couldn’t help but notice the old scars and the way his shoulders held tension. He could never escape his past, but he continued to attempt it, through all the stupid things he was doing.  
It had gone from something so stupidly habitual, to the only thing he still hung onto from his past.  
The side effects weren’t that noticeable, as his hair wasn’t long enough to be noticed when it fell. His skin had always been pale, and clothes hid his body. He always made sure to go to bed after Lisa, and in the morning be dressed before she could see any part of his body.  
This thing was thriving on secrets. Dean always said he ate in the morning - before everyone else, dinner was usually just enough to not get looks, and then at 2 am, he’d gather what he hid, and eat and puke in the bathroom.  
It wasn’t a dingy motel, frankly, but sometimes he’d get an old memory.  
Of Cas talking through the awful sounds of heaving and the coughing.  
Of Sam asking what’s wrong if Dean walked out of the bathroom pale, while Hell was breaking loose outside.  
These nights were the ones where he’d lean against the sink, and try to let himself feel, after puking and hopping on the scale twice in a minute-span.  
The longer he spent in normal, the worse he seemed to get.

**Author's Note:**

> Multi-chaptered, but hopefully not going to end up long again (as my overwriting ass does)  
This is more of an exploration of what living with an eating disorder is actually like - without the fun drama that tends to be written in  
just the raw crap that happens


End file.
